MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2024
60,000 reviews
... and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             


CD REVIEW

Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger

alternatively
Crotchet  AmazonUK   AmazonUS

 

William ALWYN (1905-1985)
Symphony No. 1 (1949) [35:57]
Symphony No. 2 (1953) [25:02]
BBC Symphony Orchestra/John Barbirolli (1)
Hallé Orchestra/John Barbirolli (2)
rec. BBC Studios, Maida Vale, London, 11 June 1952 (1); 25 Oct 1953 (2). ADD. mono
archive recordings - limited edition
DUTTON CDSJB1029 [62:46]
Experience Classicsonline


This disc is bound to speak to both Barbirolli and Alwyn enthusiasts. The music is sumptuous, strong in romantic atmosphere and laden with tragedy. For this reason it is a pity that the listener must settle for mono and archival 1950s sound even if it has been coaxed and tended to optimum results by Michael Dutton. The First Symphony sounds extremely clean but the Second suffers from some residual analogue rustling. Naturally treble response is restricted as you would expect from tapes now more than a half century old and never designed for commercial release.
 
The Baxian majesty of the first movement (7:20) of the First Symphony must have suited Barbirolli. He had after all conducted both the Fifth and Sixth Bax symphonies at the Proms and at the Cheltenham Festival. The critical reception of this, then desperately unfashionable, music had been savage. In Alwyn 1 the orchestra revel in the RVW-style whispers, galloping Baxian majesty and cunning rhythmic ingenuity of the second movement. It's strange though to hear Barbirolli scouting over the grander moments at 1:02 and 5:43. Interesting too to note that when the composer recorded this work for Lyrita SRCD227 in 1977 he took 41:13 – that’s minutes longer than Barbirolli overall. The third movement's bell-swinging reflective deliberation is heard in the horns and cor anglais. The searching mezzo voce elegiac line is strongly put across. The splendid Elgarian Cockaigne cacophony of the finale (1.30) is also notable. This is a reading of much energy that gathers itself repeatedly for some grittily exciting and triumphant climaxes. It's even Beethovenian at 8:39 and a at 8:50 it buffets the listener back for one moment to the luxurious yearning line heard at 1.22 in first movement.
 
Four years after the First Alwyn wrote his Second Symphony: he planned and wrote a sequence of four dating: 1949, 1953, 1956 and 1959. This Barbirolli reading seems comparatively sombre beside David Lloyd-Jones' version issued on Naxos. As for the composer's own recording with the LPO in 1975 (SRCD228) it is again about five minutes longer than Barbirolli.
 
After this perhaps we can look to Dutton and the Alwyn Foundation with the Cambridge University Library to release the superb Fourth conducted by Hugo Rignold. Rignold had his great moments and this was one of them as was his CBSO Bliss Lyrita disc . There are also those birthday concerts that Alwyn himself conducted with the BBC regional orchestras in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s; not to mention the Sargent-conducted premiere of Lyra Angelica with Sidonie Goossens which was rebroadcast by the BBC circa 1989.
 
Alwyn advocates and Barbirolli enthusiasts should lose no time and acquire these fascinating retrievals. I hope that the response will encourage Dutton to push the Alwyn boat out yet further.
 
Rob Barnett
 


 


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Chandos recordings
All Chandos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Past and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools




Return to Review Index

Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.